


(Don't) Look Back

by infernal



Category: Sagas of Sundry: Dread (Web Series)
Genre: Fix-It, M/M, Post-Canon, Underworld Journey
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-17
Updated: 2020-12-17
Packaged: 2021-03-10 23:14:22
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,194
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28125192
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/infernal/pseuds/infernal
Summary: The stories say you're not supposed to look back.
Relationships: Kayden/Tanner Sills
Comments: 4
Kudos: 11
Collections: Yuletide 2020





	(Don't) Look Back

**Author's Note:**

  * For [venndaai](https://archiveofourown.org/users/venndaai/gifts).



On the mountain, after Tanner, Kayden holds Sat in his arms as he apologizes for the first time in his life; he looks at Darby and Raina across from them; he closes his eyes and thinks _this isn't enough, but it's going to have to be, because this is all there is now_. He isn't going to let himself live like a zombie anymore, he isn't going to shut them out in the hopes that doing so will also shut off the part of his mind that hasn't stopped screaming since their first camping trip.

Once they're back home, that resolve dwindles. It's easier to miss his friends collectively rather than focusing on the ever-present gap in their circle, he finds, and so when Raina goes back east and this time Darby follows her, he stays right where he is. He was on pretty thin ice as it was at the video store, and the rumor mill doesn't help with that when it seems like every tongue in town is wagging about how the ~~six~~ five of them went up the mountain and only four came back. He ends up getting hired by a gas station manager who tells him, all bluntness and pragmatism, that she doesn't give a shit whether he killed his friend so long as he doesn't kill anyone while he's at work, and he can do whatever weird Satanic rituals he wants as long as he's willing to work the graveyard shift three nights a week.

So Kayden takes the job, and Raina and Darby go east. Sat stays, at first, but she drifts. He doesn't shut her out like last time, but she hates living in a place where everything reminds her of Tanner. She goes east too—a few weekends here and there, at first, whenever she can scrape up enough for a bus ticket. Then it switches somehow, and it's just the occasional weekend she's back in town, crashing on Kayden's couch and needling him to make a trip east himself, see how he likes it. 

"I don't know how you can stand it," she says as Kayden drives her to the bus station one Sunday afternoon. Her words are for him, but her eyes are fixed firmly on the rear-view mirror, where the mountain casts long shadows into the valley and beyond.

"You'd be surprised," Kayden says. Life is okay, really. Most of the time, anyway; he focuses on missing his friends in the abstract, as a group, and doesn't let himself think too hard about what's really missing. It's only when Darby and Raina follow Sat home over winter break that he realizes how much he's missed them all. And it's only when Darby looks him with a strange, exuberant glint in her eye that he's only seen there once before, and says, "I know how to bring him back," that the raw, choking, _angry_ grief that Kayden's been ignoring for far too long tears its way through him, that Kayden lets himself miss Tanner himself, rather than the group as a whole.

He takes a deep breath and asks, "So what the fuck are we waiting for?"

* * *

Sat looks more comfortable back on the mountain than she did in its shadow. A circle has no beginning or end, but theirs cracked months ago—and Sat was always the head of theirs anyway, somehow, so she sits there now waiting with a dagger in her hands as Raina carefully draws out the sigils in front of them. There's a space between Sat and Kayden, and he hates looking through it to see her. She's got to be the focal point of the ritual, Darby says—"You knew him best, so you have the best chance of bringing him back." And she's right, sure, but Kayden scoffs anyway. He didn't know Tanner _better_ , but he knew him _differently_. Loved him differently. It's just that Tanner wouldn't ever let him fucking _say_ it.

Sat's memorized the incantation, and it flows effortlessly from her lips. It will take a willing soul to his, Darby says, wherever it is, and once there, she'll have to convince him to return. That's the easy part, Kayden thinks, knowing Tanner would follow her anywhere. The hard part is whatever the fuck this is going to take from Sat, because yeah, Darby might have been right before, but there was one hell of a cost involved. God only knows this one's not gonna come cheap. 

She finishes the incantation and slams the dagger down into the ground. Sparks fly out from the broken earth, blindingly bright, and Sat cries out; Kayden's got his eyes shut against the brightness and has just enough time to think _Fuck you, you're not taking her too,_ before the light fades. He opens his eyes and blinks a few times. There's no ritual circle before him, no dagger, no friends—just a dismal gray fog that rolls down from the jagged peaks that rise out of distant shadows. Figures move here and there, as wispy and insubstantial as the mist surrounding them. 

"Jesus fucking Christ," he breathes, and the figures stop as one, turning in unison towards the sound of a living voice. Kayden clamps his lips firmly shut against the fearful laughter he can already feel bubbling up; it's a good thing he does, not just because the figures slowly begin to turn their gazes away, but because it means he doesn't yell when cold fingers grab the crook of his arm, though it's a near thing. 

He turns, slowly, and seeing Tanner again shouldn't feel as it good as it does. Not when he looks like he does now, almost as gray and lifeless as the world around them, barely discernible from the other wispy figures that circle around. Tanner puts a finger to his lips and leads Kayden towards the mountains in the distance. Kayden follows, silent, until Tanner stops and looks at him. "No one ever comes this far," he says, voice so low that Kayden can barely tell that it's rough from disuse. "We can talk here." Kayden nods. "So fucking talk, asshole," he adds when Kayden remains silent. 

Kayden laughs. He can't help it, not when his fucking _ghost frenemy_ is standing here in front of him looking just as pissed off with him as he did in life. "Sorry, what did you want me to say? Hey, stranger, come here often?" 

"You're not supposed to fucking _be here_ ," Tanner says. His voice is a little stronger now, though he keeps it low. It's clear that drawing attention in this place would have dire consequences, and Kayden does his best to stifle his laughter. "You're clearly alive—" and he sounds bitter about that, go fucking figure— "so what the fuck is going on, Kayden?" 

"I was in the neighborhood," he says, snickering again at the glare Tanner gives him. He looks more like himself now, frustration lining his face. "We did a ritual, man. We're getting you back. Sat was supposed to be the one to come here, but the ritual got fucked up or something, so here I am."

"Of course it did," Tanner says. "Do you even know how to get out of here?" 

Maybe Darby had only told Sat; or maybe she'd gotten into the exit strategy when she did her whole ritual spiel and Kayden hadn't been able to follow what she was telling him, all _mythological precedent_ this and _metaphysical implications_ that. He shrugs, and Tanner groans. 

"Why the fuck did it have to be you?" he mutters.

And it's been fun winding Tanner up, it always has been, but his tone digs its way into that open, grieving place in Kayden's chest and rubs salt in the wound it finds there. "Darby said the ritual wouldn't work unless we sent the person who loved you the most, so take that however the fuck you want," Kayden says.

It's not quite true, but saying it means that Tanner looks like Kayden punched him right in the gut, and it's worth the lie, Kayden thinks. Tanner's frustration dissipates, but his expression doesn't soften. He licks his lips, speechless, and then his eyes dart up towards the peaks behind them. "I'm guessing you guys did the ritual on the mountain, right?" Kayden nods. "Then let's go up." 

"That's the way out?" 

"I don't know, but it's better than just standing here," Tanner says, gesturing behind Kayden. He looks back to see that some of the wispy figures have wandered closer, a hungry curiosity in their eyes. One of them looms larger than the others, a solid 6'8" if Kayden had to guess, and it tips its head with curiosity; with recognition.

"Up it is," Kayden says.

* * *

In the stories, you're not supposed to look back. A test of faith. But whichever ancient trendsetter came up with the idea hadn't accounted for Tanner's absolute lack of faith in Kayden, because near the top of the mountain he turns around. Kayden tenses, but when he doesn't dissipate, doesn't turn to salt, he relaxes. "You're fading," Tanner says, frowning. 

"Kinda thought I might be," Kayden says, looking down at his gray-tinged hands, weirdly insubstantial despite the fact that he feels the same as ever. That's the other part of the stories, usually—that it's the living that guides the dead back. Tanner started up the mountain and Kayden followed, so maybe that's the problem. But he was fading before that, he thinks. Ever since the color started coming back to Tanner with his first angry flush, since his form began to solidify—well, Kayden knew there'd be some cost, after all. He grins at Tanner, hoping it's as shit-eating and infuriating as it usually is. If it's Tanner's anger at him that's bringing him back to life, Kayden might as well put a bit more color back into his cheeks. "You're looking pretty good there, though." 

Tanner looks down at himself, like he hadn't realized he was solidifying with every step further up the mountain, then back at Kayden. "No," he says. "Fuck this, no, you're not—" 

"I don't think it works like that," Kayden starts to say, flippantly, and then Tanner is kissing him, hands clutching at Kayden's shoulders. "What the fuck," Kayden says, leaning back.

Tanner doesn't answer, too busy closing the distance between them again, biting at Kayden's lips. Something old and familiar uncurls in Kayden's chest; it's yearning and it's devoted and it's fucking _furious_. "Oh, fuck you," he breathes against Tanner's lips. The one time they'd done this before, well. Kayden hasn't forgotten the way Tanner had been the one to back him into the corner of the darkroom, purposeful but clumsy, unpracticed, as he pressed their lips together. Kayden had kissed him back because he'd been watching Tanner spend all of their senior year watching him back, because he'd never dreamed this quiet, gangly, absolute wet dream of irritability and repression would ever make a fucking move and even Kayden knew better than to push that particular button, because _of course he fucking had_.

It had lasted all of thirty awkward, glorious, ruinous seconds before whatever common sense had fled Tanner in that moment came rushing back. He'd backed away looking for all the world like a startled deer, staring at Kayden for a panicked moment before fleeing his own darkroom, letting the light flood in and destroy the negatives . He'd never mentioned it again—neither of them had, but Tanner never quite met his eyes anymore, except with occasional suspicion and anger like Kayden had been the one to cross the line, not him.

"I'm giving it back," Tanner says now, and there's something so desperate in his voice that Kayden's anger starts to fizzle out for once.

"I don't think it works like that," he says again, and then Tanner's lips are back on his and fuck it, if this is how Kayden dies, well, it's better than how he was living, that's for fucking sure. He lets Tanner back him up against an outcropping of rock, twines his fingers into Tanner's hair, lets Tanner kiss the life back into him even though he shouldn't, because he's always taken whatever Tanner's willing to give him. 

"That's better," Tanner says eventually. 

" _Yeah_ it fucking is," Kayden says without opening his eyes, and he feels Tanner's laugh against his hair. It's a light sound, one that he's never heard directed at him, and he opens his eyes to find Tanner still as substantial as before. His own hands, where they're still tangled in Tanner's hair, are too, and he lets out a sigh. "Can't believe you were fucking right." 

"Get used to it," he says smugly, and it's Kayden's turn to laugh. Tanner's gaze falls back to his mouth, and Kayden surges forward again, captures Tanner's lips for a moment.

"One for the road," he says, giddy at the color rising high in Tanner's cheeks, this time flustered instead of angry. "Now fucking _come on_ , before we get stuck here," he says, and this time Tanner doesn't lead the way, but falls into step beside him.


End file.
